Clear and Present Danger

Clear and Present Danger (1994) begins with Jack Ryan rising inside the CIA. A close friend of the president is murdered on a boat and a Colombian cartel is behind it. The White House decides to respond, but does so without informing Congress, through an off the books military operation. Ryan learns about it afterwards, having already misled Congress. The best thing about it is that the cartel is not the real antagonist. Ryan's fight is with his own government: an operation with no legal authority, soldiers left in the field, and officials who will not take responsibility. Phillip Noyce directed, his second Jack Ryan film after Patriot Games. Harrison Ford plays Ryan, James Earl Jones his superior Greer, and Willem Dafoe the field commander. The source is Tom Clancy's novel. Its best known sequence is the ambush of a convoy in Bogotá, staged in narrow streets and executed almost entirely with practical effects. It cost 62 million dollars and grossed 215 million worldwide, the highest of the Ford era films in the series. It runs 141 minutes. Good for: political thrillers, procedural espionage, and Harrison Ford. Less good for: at 141 minutes the institutional setup in the first hour runs long. The Colombian characters are one dimensional. The rescue at the end works against the bureaucratic realism the film spent two hours building.